The Horizon

It is well known that those who set goals become far more successful than those who do not; furthermore, those who have an idea where they are going are able to progress on a path much faster. If you do not know what you want to do; finding out should be your highest priority.

Ask yourself “what would I be doing if money were no object?”; if you won the lottery, and invested it wisely so that you could live off the dividends, what would you do. For myself, I would coordinate research projects and check on them occasionally, do spiritual work, and coaching. This is quite like what I am doing now, and I do that now not having yet reached financial independence.

Seek to have those different aspects aligned into one broader vision. This is the ‘why behind the why’. Ask yourself: “Why am I doing this?”, then ask yourself “why?” again and again, until you have reached rocked bottom, where you have a strong emotional response, usually crying.

When we posit a vision of the future, we can hold that vision in mind, suddenly the path to it reveals itself. Our progress is much faster depending on the clarity of the vision that we have for ourselves. Diffuse vision diverted energies.

So, work on this, make your vision as clear as possible; reflect on in night after night and you will attain it.

For a while, I envisioned myself writing at an Amsterdam café, by a canal. I have got a notebook and a bestselling book. I fulfilled part of the vision (the easy part!) earlier this February when I visited.

Formulating a vision gives us a horizon to move towards, and like the horizon that constantly moves away as we approach; we never ‘arrive’. Life is a continual process of discovery.

Moving towards this horizon gives our lives meaning, even though we will perish before we meet it. Enlightenment is never some state that has been achieved, it is a temporary glimpse. To live within it has been achieved by a few people.

What does enlightenment look like?

To have detachment from the world, not detachment as in repression, but detachment as in seeing the dramas and comedies of life without being wrapped up in them. This is easier said than done of course.

One paradigm that lucid dreaming work enforces is that of life as a dream, where one is free to do anything. A brief aside, if one is morally developed, and has cleared up traumas, this ‘anything’ does not include harming other people. The prohibition ‘well if we all did what we want, it would be utter chaos’ is likely made up by those who want to control humans for their own ends. The notion that humans need rules and punishment to get them to behave well is based in dominator culture and reinforces a low state of consciousness.

This brings us a sense of possibility that we can bring into our waking life. We can become more lucid in our dreams, and more lucid in our waking lives. What does lucidity look like?

It means that you don’t have to stumble into moods and perform soothing behaviour to get yourself into our out of moods, this is dukkha, or suffering, which comes from craving and aversion, reactions which keep us out of the present.

Consciousness, awareness, the present, these are all synonymous, in the light of the present, our worries are burned up. The experience of being in a mood and watching myself act in ways that I would not having been in those moods creates pain in myself. Reacting to moods has the effect of strengthening the mood, whereas pausing and noticing the onset of the mood lessens the effect of the mood.  

Responding is different from reacting, and fundamentally, responding is just responding with love. If we see garbage on the street, the reaction is to ignore it or to feel disgust, note how ignoring it is itself a reaction, and that only serves to attempt to remove the stimulus. So long as that trauma is still there, you will attract things that stimulate it; each of these is an opportunity to let go of that trauma.

One way in which people spiritual bypass is that they use such concepts to justify an otherwise unfavorable situation, they do not pick up the litter or seem to react to it.

This can be very dangerous, as apathy can masquerade as acceptance to some. This is a quite big trap as these are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to spiritual development.

Apathy is basically not caring. In this state, we just allow things to happen, we are not truly interfacing with the world. It is a mindset designed to conserve energy above all else.

Acceptance is merely seeing the world in truth, and not denying it. Acceptance is the first of 12 steps for alcoholics anonymous, because here you acknowledge that you are powerless to alcohol, otherwise you would have already solved it. This gets you facing the situation as it is, furthermore, only through acceptance can we change the problem, as we must first apprehend it before we may do anything about it.

Apathy pretends that a problem does not exist, either that it is not really a problem or outright denial. We do not have to hold to a moralistic judging, as judgements are limitations, we impose on the world based on our own past biases. It is not judgemental to say that someone will not get to San Jose if they are on the road to Seattle, to borrow the analogy from Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsh.

Apathy is typically a self-hating energy, which says “I do not deserve x”. By taking no action, one further instantiates that they are not worthy, and so the cycle continues.

Acceptance is merely a truth orientation to the world that says “I have x” or “I do not have x” without emotional charge. Whatever they do from here, they may, apathy pretends like movement towards x or away from x is problematic.

So, what is the role of ‘bettering’ one’s situation?

In common parlance, we know what this means, and any apparent contradictions are solved by this dictum

“Be happy for what you have”

The apathetic masquerading as enlightened says that the above statement should cut one off from growth.

The acceptant person acknowledges this and can act to produce more.

Apathetic people or abusers use the above statement to rationalize a poor situation, in the latter case, one that they are perpetuating.

Accepting a situation does not mean that it cannot change, even that you should do nothing to change it.

Apathy is submission to an external situation.

One way we stay in apathy is by not living with intention. At base, what are your values, and what is the why behind the why?

We can live with intention by defining what we are creating in the world, to truly own our own influence.

Therefore, anything which is made manifest in the world is created through us, we are the vehicles to bring it out into the world. A life of apathy is a life lived towards the intention of conserving energy in the short term, this will not create anything of value. A life of service towards our highest can create things beyond our comprehension here in this moment, what comes is always far wilder than what would be expected by rational prediction.

We live for the moments that defy rational prediction, in fact, this could be called the essence of life itself; after all, a mote of dust merely moves with air currents, obeying physical laws. When we add life, (whether that be defined as elan vital, primordial germ plasm, a cell nucleus, the ability to replicate or any of these properties we look to for a hard-and-fast dichotomous variable) we are introduced to unpredictability, and therefore excitement. There exists a probability of the extinguishing of the thing, and a probability of its continuation. This is the hero’s journey, as the hero is merely doing rote tasks and exerting rote effort until there is a challenge that has the possibility of failure.

Acceptance can look at both outcomes and be at peace as it makes that step into the unknown, it doesn’t have to have things be guaranteed to go his or her way, the action itself is the goal, which is aligned with the intention. The irony is that action done for its own sake is never wasted, it always ends up serving eventually, even as just a learning experience.

 Acceptance can take the failure and keep going, apathy asks “Why try?”.

Here, we can see which one is more empowering, and which mental model to adopt should we have an impact in the world.